Reflections on the Dating Game

One of my favorite shows, as a teenager, was "The Dating Game". I would picture myself as the young, debutante-like female asking clever questions and choosing the handsomest, wittiest bachelor on the other side of the screen. (In 1967, an unknown Tom Selleck was one of the bachelors. I could have married Tom Selleck!!!)

Later, I married (and, no, he wasn't the handsomest or the wittiest or the most faithful - but I digress...) and stayed that way for 23 years. One of the reasons we stayed together for so long was because we knew there would be a custody battle:

"You take the kids."

"No. YOU take the kids."

"I'm not taking the kids!"

And so on...

In the end, I got the kids and he got the bird - a cockatiel. We had a cockatiel! I got the kids... he got, oh, never mind.

Anyway, for the last 7 years, I have been mate-less and dateless and I have learned to enjoy it immensely. I don't have to explain my comings and goings. I can stay up late and watch TV or play on the computer. I can clip my toenails in bed (not a good idea even if you sleep alone, I've realized...). I can change my hairstyle without expecting anyone to notice. I can order extra onions on anything I want, 'cause I ain't kissing nobody! It is sooo much fun!

Until today, I had only been approached by one man for a date. He was a 68-year-old widower from my neighborhood in Tooele, Utah, and he had helped install the washer and dryer in my apartment. He came back to my door about a week later and gave me a pamphlet about some miracle juice that helps with weight loss and said he felt he was supposed to ask me out. In shock, and shaking uncontrollably, I told him no, thank you, that I wasn't ready to date yet. Closing the door, I sat on the sofa and had my first anxiety attack. Not long after, I heard he married someone else in the neighborhood. Bless his fickle little heart - I hope she was thin!

My daughter-in-law wants me to find someone to marry. HER mother calls me and suggests different online dating sites, and a friend of mine called to tell me there is a Singles Conference next weekend and that I should go. I'm fine, I tell them. No thanks. I've decided that if Fate wants me to remarry, I'll open my door and there will be someone 6' 8", with a great sense of humor, hundred dollar bills hanging out of his pockets and a letter that names me personally as his bride-to-be. I'm willing to wait.

Today, I called my apartment manager and told her the commode in my bathroom had developed a leak. She sent Maintenance right up.

As the head maintenance man worked in my bathroom, he sent his partner back and forth downstairs to get tools and things. Each time his assistant was gone, he would talk to me about his life and raising two daughters on his own, and how his first four marriages hadn't worked, but he had learned that it wasn't what was on the outside of a woman that mattered (and here he looked at me meaningfully), but what was on the inside. "She has to have a good heart. And I think I'm looking right at her," he said.

Now, let me give you a visual. I am six feet...square (at least for the purpose of this analogy). This thin, little man was at least 12 inches shorter than I - when he stood on his good leg. His fingernails weren't just dirty, they were crusty. His glasses were held together with electrical tape and he had...how can I put this tactfully?...a lingering odor of 'spices' mixed with 'work'. All I could think about was how, if I fell on him, I'd crush him like a clove of garlic.

I admit it. Everyone else is right. I am wrong. If this is what Fate is going to send to my home for my consideration, I have GOT to get out more!

Now, what were the names of some of those online dating sites...?